Dr Doyin Okupe has got his gloves off and is ready to spar with anyone who takes his boss to task disparagingly.
The President’s Senior Special Assistant on Public Communications had a few choice words for the duo of Wole Soyinka and Tunde Bakare who were scathing in their remarks of President Jonathan’s views regarding last January’s Fuel subsidy protests. Bakare had described the President’s comments as ‘bunkum’ while Soyinka had said the President “is lamentably alienated from the true pulse of the nation” and that “he was suffering from bad conscience”.
Dr Doyin Okupe will have none of it, however, and told Press men in Abuja;
“The office of the President deserves respect. To say the President is suffering from bad conscience as stated by Prof. Soyinka is wrong.
“His (Jonathan’s) action on the N5,000 note showed that he loves Nigerians and he is not alienated from them.
“We do not need to desecrate the office of the President. It is uncivil for Bakare to say that the President’s comment is bunkum, which means nonsense.
“We will not accept that; we won’t allow anyone to be insulting the office of the President. Bakare himself can be President tomorrow.”
Now we know why Okupe was hired.
Dr Okupe also said the friction between the Legislature and the Executive was normal in a Democracy but cautioned against the former using its oversight functions indiscriminately.
“We would want to appeal to our respected lawmakers to sheathe their swords. They should stop threatening the President with impeachment every time there is a disagreement.
“They should allow the temperature of the polity to come down. We will continue to have executive/legislative conflict, but we should continue to allow maturity to come in.
“Yes, the legislature has the power to impeach, but we should not be flaunting this every time.
“We should forget about impeachment in order to build this democracy; conflict will always be there, but we must manage it.”
Well, that was some advise
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